Eckhart Tolle versus Ellsworth Toohey
June 3, 2008
I am making this comparison because the similarities between these two people, one real and one fictional are too good to pass up.
First of all, Eckhart Tolle is the author of a new york bestseller called ‘The Power of NOW’. This book seems to me to be a repackaging of basic buddhistic principles of the mind & consciousness & the unconscious, and on how to achieve joy or enlightenment. His writing on this subject seems a bit superficial and a lot of the concepts are presented in a vague way by using imprecise words. For a better introduction to buddhist concepts, I recommend Mindfulness in Plain English, which is available online for free, but can also be purchased from a bookstore or amazon.com.
Ellsworth Toohey is one of the antagonists in Ayn Rand’s fictional book ‘The Fountainhead’. In the book he is a highly charismatic public speaker and writes a newspaper column and uses his influence to promote a sort of socialism/collectivism. He is well dressed, often wearing suits and his physical description is that of a small frail man with a big head.
Here is a picture of Eckhart Tolle:
Both Eckhart Tolle and Ellsworth Toohey have strange names with the same initials, a common appearance, both are writers, and both promote ‘mysticism’. One via his books on mindfulness/spirituality, the other via socialism/collectivism. Plenty in common!
Those that have read Ayn Rand’s writings will realize that my association of Eckhart Tolle to Ellsworth Toohey happens to be extremely negative. In Ayn Rand’s view, mysticism is tantamount to evil, because it means you are believing something for no reason, you are deliberately refusing to think or reason or be rational about that particular area of your “beliefs”.
Strangely, I’m actually not trying to be negative about Eckhart Tolle, that’s just a side effect of this comparison, because I thought there were so many darn similarities! The commonalities between these two characters is probably just a strong coincidence. I don’t think that Eckhart Tolle is as evil as Ellsworth Toohey.
I strongly think that there are real facts of human nature and the workings of the ‘brain-mind’ behind the various mindfulness & buddhism concepts. And I hope people will explore these fully and develop more precise ways of discussing these concepts.
For that reason, I think that Eckhart Tolle’s writings are probably positive for introducing a wide range of people to the basic concepts of mindfulness. Unfortunately, his writing style is very imprecise and encourages fuzzy-minded, mysticism-based beliefs anyways.
Huh.
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I was just thinking about Buddhism, as I am taking a humanities class where they had a video of Huston Smith explaining the subject. He related a tale of his joining a Zen monastery, where he was asked a question (Koan) to confuse the rational mind, then at the end deprived of sleep. To make a long story short, he was about to yell at the Zen master (he thought it would make him sick), but was stopped with the question “What is health, or sickness? There is no difference.” which triggered a religious experience for him.
The statement is utter nonsense, of course, from the rational perspective (and Huston admitted such to be the case.) Which I think is kind of the point… the religious experience is actually something that only happens when the rational mind is suspended. The irrational mind then steps in and performs a sort of reconciliation on the opposites.
I do think the rational mind is supreme, as a way to properly live your life. However, I can see the logic that perhaps the rational brain function needs a break sometimes for purely psychological reasons. If this really induces a state of reduced stress, it could lead to a longer life and more productive relationships — which is a rational goal, after all. You just probably don’t want to become an insane mystic over it…
From a Jungian perspective, it could be a J/P thing. The N/S functions are irrational, in that they don’t call for a resolution of every seeming paradox or contradiction. Instead they recieve the information passively. T/F functions are more aggressive about defining things in a way that brings closure. My theory is that by temporarily shutting down the rational functions, you can exercise the irrational ones and get better use out of them, and perhaps less biased information.
Perhaps some people today are fuzzy in their thinking because they don’t understand (or admit to) the distinction between the rational experience and the religious experience. If they drew a sharper line in the sand between the two, it might make more sense.
Or it triggered a philsophical experience for him.
I don’t really like the notion of rational and irrational minds. I think it makes more sense to talk of conscious and unconscious minds. I can totally relate to the existence of the conscious mind and how it can interfere with the wisdom of our unconscious mind.
I think the brain overall is quite rational as a result of evolution. But our “conscious” self (a recent addition), has trouble understanding the rest of the brain. That’s where buddhism comes in I think. Buddhism is about understanding the nature of self, life, pleasure, etc.
I think buddhism is not a religion, but rather much more philosophical but also practical because it is about people learning how their brains and their sense of self works.
Koans seem like tools to encourage philosophical thinking and to explore the sense of self and reality. With a combination of detachment and attachment, there’s enlightenment. I wonder if enlightenment needs to be described as religious though.
There’s some ambiguous words that I try to get away from like spirit, soul, religious, etc.
How about a psychological experience then? :P
Buddhism may not be a religion in its quintessential form, but it seems fair to say there are religions that call themselves Buddhism. (I would say reincarnation is a religious concept, for example.) Meditation itself seems more a technique for attaining a particular sensation of enlightenment and well-being. This in turn (I’d say) is a psychological state.
The term “rational” essentially means dividing into discrete components. (Think rationing during wartime, or even rational numbers. Same root concept.) The rational mind (or the rational function within the mind) is the part that divides things into appropriate divisions. There is a sense of finality to a rational statement, just as a rational number can be expressed by a finite fraction.
Irrational statements have no really definite interpretation. You can approximate them rationally but not nail them down. I tend to think the brain has seperate processes for dealing with these kinds of things. I’d expect they fall into sensation and intuition categories, depending on whether they fit into the experience of the present or represent anticipation of future possibilities.
The conscious/unconscious dichotomy is interesting as well, but I think it is a different aspect than rational/irrational. We can be aware of sensations or intuitions consciously, without having yet made a judgment about them, and we can make decisions based on feelings or logic without being aware of having done so.
Okay, I think you are roughly saying that the rational part of the brain breaks things down into their units and tries to understand them from that. Whereas the irrational part is able to view or understand the whole of parts? Kind of a right brain/left brain thing? Logic vs Creativity?